I am born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia and I still reside there. Raised in a lower middle-class neighborhood by separated parents. I would not say I had a rough childhood as Ive heard many stories much worse than mine, this includes my wifes childhood. Anyway, my mother and stepfather fought often. These fights were normally verbal, but sometimes resulted in physical fights. Weekends were a regular party for my parents. They were either going out or having friends over. If they were going out, I would be watched by a younger cousin which meant I did whatever I wanted to do. Weekends when my parents went out usually ended in a fight. Mom getting pepper sprayed by police and taken away. Dad would usually come and pick me up to take me to his house. Dad remarried and divorced again. Dad never made dinner. It was either we were ordering out or eating Hungry Man meals or Banquet Dinners (Both Frozen meals).
I was an all-star baseball player from the beginning of Little League till I quit playing. Tee-Ball, kids would be struggling to hit the ball off the tee and I was throwing it in the air and hitting it. This is when my father and I had a great relationship, but with everything going on at moms house I turned to drugs, Oxycontin was my downfall. 8th or 9th grade is when I became dependent on Pain Killers and I quit playing baseball 9th or 10th grade. I was addicted from than until my older son turned 4 and I almost lost my job. Oldest sons mother graduated from pain pills to heroin so I had to move on. Thats were that relationship ended. At the same time I almost lost my job for a failed urine test. Employer sent me to rehab, sons mother went to jail, not only was I going to lose my job and my son, I was also kicked out of my grandmothers house. So Ive been clean ever since and I raised my oldest on my own from 4 years old to about 6-7 when I met my wife.
How I got into crypto is a funny story. 2013-2014 my job had a shortage of orders and lowered our working hours to 32 hours a week, down from 40-60 a week. I had to look to cut corners to make my bills. The first thing I cut out was cable TV. I started streaming all my entertainment over Kodi, the open-source media platform. It wasn't easy for me let alone my wife, she could never find working live streams. This was very difficult for her with 2 children in the house, and me being an avid sports fan, so I began researching paid Apps for kodi. I came across a certain service with great review that offered ALL sporting events and most channels. So I paid for a month with a credit card. It went great so I pad for 3 months. That went very well, until the developer quit taking cash payments and moved onto Bitcoin, 1 year payments only. Thats how I learned about Bitcoin & Crypto. After that year I decided to start selling Streaming services myself, only accepting crypto as payment. At this point, BTC was about $500. I did this for almost 2 years, I decided to quit selling streaming services when BTC started rising above 2k then 5k and so on. I made the decision that I have earned enough selling this service that Ill just hold BTC LTC and ETH on Coinbase and use the money as needed if I ever got in money troubles. I figured, it was less risky holding these coins to make money than to sell a borderline illegal streaming service. This went on until mid 2017 when I discovered other Altcoins and exchanges. This is when I became completely entwined in Crypto. It was my new addiction. I wanted to learn and read everything about bitcoin. I started reading blogs, books, and watching videos/movies on the assets. Ive managed to get a few friends into crypto as well as family members. To add them all up to give you a number, I would say I got 7 people into crypto. Im currently still employed Full Time, and I am a Higher-Up at Bitcoin Bravado. Now that Ive said that, let me make this clear as its not known in the space. Higher-Ups at Bitcoin Bravado are not paid, employed, or rewarded for their position. We are labeled "Higher-Ups" because Bravado trusts our research and we are always available to help out other members. I enjoy Masternodes the most out of everything crypto. It's my favorite channel in Bravado Discord and I am aways happy and ready to help someone with their Masternode setups, or researching a MN coin for a member. Again, I do this for free because I am infatuated with the tech.
Thats the story behind Curt Shilling and how I got into crypto.